The first Advocate is an excellent number. It is good reading from the beginning to the end, or at least nearly to the end. The editorials are delightfully written and very entertaining, somewhat light perhaps, but what one of us is prepared for things serious now? Of the "Two Sketches," the first is rather the more pleasing - it is happier - and there will be time enough for dismals later on. "A Fallen Idol" is good, very good in the beginning. "The dead silence of him who is drinking beer" is full of meaning. The Kodaks are rather entertaining as a whole. The first is not bad; the second, it seems to us, has not enough in it to justify its appearance in the Advocate; the third is excellent, very well worked up, though it would hardly be proper in a co-educational college; the fourth is good; the fifth is fair, but the sixth is bad and wholly untrue to Harvard life. We are not thoroughly barbarous here. Manliness and gentleness go hand in hand and shame at helping a little boy argues a childish and indecent state of things which does not exist.

The Transitory Tramp' is a very good story, well told and abounding in happy expressions. Nothing could be better than Miss Eliza's expectation to be 'elaborately murdered' when they reached the second floor. And how expressive is 'in all her plump and peaceful life.' The interest of the story is kept up to the very last and the ending is as delightful as the beginning.

'Rouge et Noir' is a reminiscence of an alleged experience. It is good, the reminiscence, we mean, and there is the atmosphere of Paris about it all. There is not much in the plot, to be sure, but the descriptions make up for that lack.

The last piece in the number is a weak thing to our minds. The dialogue is decidedly reminiscent, in fact, it is simply a rehash of trashy plays and novels of English life. The hero poses as another Beau Brummel and talks of shopkeepers 'who ought to feel proud of his patronage. The good valet who pays his master's debts out of his savings, and the goodness of his heart, him we have met before. And the sketch is not improved by its tame tragic ending.

The verse of the number included two good little things, the quartrain signed "L. H." being very clever.